NETWORK BANDWIDTH AND OBJECT OBSOLESCENCE SENSITIVE SCHEDULING METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OBJECTS DISTRIBUTED BROADCASTING

A proxy strategy not only caches objects but actively sets update schedules for channel information disseminated from different servers. Based on available bandwidth, this proxy strategy formulates a mathematical function that can be solved to establish the proxy update schedules by maximizing the overall currency of information received by the clients. Clients whose update requests do not result in receiving the most upto-date information for a given channel may also be recorded. After the next scheduled proxy update for a given channel, the proxy actively sends the most up-to-date information for this channel to the recorded clients. The client interest for a given channel is measured based on the client updates the proxy received since last scheduled update for this channel, and the currency of information received by these clients. A dynamic update can be performed by the proxy for channels with high client interest before their respective scheduled updates based on the available bandwidth. Upon performing a dynamic update for a given channel, the proxy can delay the next schedule update for this channel by a whole regular proxy update interval.